Microelectronic manufacturing techniques have led to the miniaturization of numerous devices. Mobile phones, personal digital assistant devices, and digital cameras are very common examples of the miniaturization trend.
One device that has not seen the advantage of microelectronic manufacturing techniques is the printer. Commercially available printers are large compared to many of the devices they could support. For instance, it is impractical to carry a color printer for the purpose of instantly printing photographs taken with known compact digital cameras.
A compact printhead has been described in co-pending United States patent applications filed simultaneously to the present application and hereby incorporated by cross reference:
 USSN filing date 09/575,152 05/23/2000 09/575,141 05/23/2000 09/575,125 05/23/2000 09/575,176 05/23/2000 09/575,147 05/23/2000
A compact printer system must provide as much ink as possible to print multiple images between ink cartridge replacements. In known systems the printhead is incorporated into the ink cartridge and the entire unit is replaced when the ink is exhausted. In other systems the ink cartridge is a separate unit. In either case, the cartridge is a relatively small component compared to the total size of the printer. In a compact printer system the ink cartridge is a substantial part of the whole printer module and therefore careful attention must be given to its design to maximize the amount of ink available for printing.